News and Press Releases

Prosarix acquires Amura’s computational technology

Cambridge, UK, February 21st 2007 — Prosarix Ltd today announced the acquisition of the rights to the ProtoDiscovery™ computational technology platform and in silico screening/design business from Amura Holdings Ltd.

The ProtoDiscovery™ platform was originally developed by Proteom Ltd which was acquired by Amura Holdings in January 2006. Amura recently completed a company restructure in order to concentrate on the development of its orally active cathepsin inhibitor programs, culminating in the effective spinout of the computational operation into Prosarix.

“We are very pleased to conclude this agreement with Amura.” commented Dr Bill Hamilton, CEO of Prosarix “We have used the ProtoDiscovery™ technology very effectively over the last few years and we are now in a position to continue its development and, more importantly, its application to an increasing number of projects with partner companies.”

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About Prosarix
Prosarix is a computational chemistry company that uses its proprietary technology platform for small molecule screening and design in drug discovery. The Company carries out serviced-based discovery projects as well as generating pre-clinical development candidates for out-licensing. As a drug discovery service partner Prosarix has developed a unique technology platform capable of rapidly identifying novel hits against targets of interest. The ProtoDiscovery™ application suite includes proprietary virtual screening (ProtoScreen™), de novo design (ProtoBuild™), scoring methods (ProtoScore™) and GPCR modelling capabilities.

About Amura
Amura is a structure-based drug discovery business specialising in diseases such as osteoporosis, bone metastasis and autoimmunity. Amura has a proprietary platform technology (AMcore™) that provides a turnkey solution for the discovery of small molecule inhibitors against cysteine peptidases (e.g. cathepsin enzymes). Amura compounds, apart from being potent and selective, also exhibit highly desirable drug-like properties thereby facilitating the rapid and innovative discovery of orally active drugs with the potential for application across several commercially attractive disease areas. Amura intends to assemble pre-clinical packages for each of its programmes demonstrating efficacy in disease related animal models as well as safety pharmacology profiling; after which it intends to license out the programmes.